Testers and reviewers wanted: BFG-style vertex cache

[lowenz]

750 Ti vs HD 630:

 

[duzenko]

Let me know if you need some Intel iGPU testing.

Try the staircase in Old Habits2 or wine cellar in StAlban Caduceus.

[cabalistic]

First thing I tried two years ago

It's only profiling DirectX on Windows !11

 

In the case above it turned out to be low stencil fillrate, which is an actual problem on Intel.

I can't help but want add an option to render shadows in half of main resolution.

Can't speak about two years ago, but the site currently explicitly lists OpenGL support for the frame analyzer, at least...

[stgatilov]

or test the strange case where the system has multi-core and modern GL support but no fence sync

extension and see if com_smp offers any improvement in spite of the glFinish operations.

In case user system does not support the fence, the finish call is used. It is slow, but it works at least.

One possible use for the cvar is to make it easy for us to emulate such conditions on our GPUs which have fence support and normally will use it.

[duzenko]

Can't speak about two years ago, but the site currently explicitly lists OpenGL support for the frame analyzer, at least...

[nbohr1more]

Update 10 is update:

 

https://www.moddb.com/mods/the-dark-mod/downloads/tdm-206-vertex-buffer-beta

[lowenz]

Thanks man!

[peter_spy]

Mapping using 2.07 / Update 10, everything seems to be working fine. Commands like reloadimages work properly. Loading times are fast, even with uncompressed TGA textures everywhere. I only have one suggestion when it comes to soft gamma, IMO value range should be wider. Right now it's 0-2, which was fine for the old gamma. With new gamma, everything is pretty dark, and what was 1.2 in the older system is more like 2.2 for the new one.

Edited September 14, 2018 by Judith

[duzenko]

Mapping using 2.07 / Update 10, everything seems to be working fine. Commands like reloadimages work properly. Loading times are fast, even with uncompressed TGA textures everywhere. I only have one suggestion when it comes to soft gamma, IMO value range should be wider. Right now it's 0-2, which was fine for the old gamma. With new gamma, everything is pretty dark, and what was 1.2 in the older system is more like 2.2 for the new one.

It should be capped at 10 (a recent change) . Did you try values higher than 2?

On the other hand we do need a bugtracker entry to get the brightness in 2.06 and 2.07 match

[peter_spy]

Yup, by using r_gamma in the console. But the slider in game menu has range of 0-2.

[nbohr1more]

Update 11 is up at Moddb:

 

https://www.moddb.com/mods/the-dark-mod/downloads/tdm-206-vertex-buffer-beta

 

 

 

(Too changes many to remember!)

 

Grayman fixed a few AI pathfinding issues and door handling issues

 

Grayman added better support for security camera features

 

Sgtatilov fixed an issue with EFX ignoring mixed case location names

 

Duzenko added an experimental multi-light mode ( r_testARBProgram 2 )

(Requires that you enable shadow maps, r_shadows 2)

 

Duzenko implemented true "Contact Hardening" soft shadows in Shadow Map mode (r_shadows 2)

The softening appears to be scaled differently in this mode and the slider only goes to 5

so you'll want to use the console to crank it up for now: r_softShadowsRadius 10

 

Revelator added some more BFG multicore port code and added more rendertools fixes

 

Cabalistic fixed more light leak scenarios by changing the way shadow FBO is handled

 

Oh, yeah... Duzenko's soft gamma modes are available and the new volumetric lights, and glare shaders.

[duzenko]

The volumetric is not in svn yet. The glare material has been postponed beyond 2.07.

"Stay tuned"

[peter_spy]

Downloading now.

Edited September 27, 2018 by Judith

[peter_spy]

Shit, is there a way to revert to update 10? I deleted my zip, and it's not on the moddb as well, all links lead to update 11.

 

And yet another edit: I managed to get the lights back, but the speculars are barely there, and shadows are pixelated. Reverting to 2.06 until I can get back to update 10.

 

Sorry for the panic, I created a separate folder for update 11 to see what's the problem. It seems the r_testARBProgram 2 weakens speculars a lot:

 

Before:

 

After:

Edited September 27, 2018 by Judith

[duzenko]

Shit, is there a way to revert to update 10? I deleted my zip, and it's not on the moddb as well, all links lead to update 11.

 

And yet another edit: I managed to get the lights back, but the speculars are barely there, and shadows are pixelated. Reverting to 2.06 until I can get back to update 10.

 

Sorry for the panic, I created a separate folder for update 11 to see what's the problem. It seems the r_testARBProgram 2 weakens speculars a lot:

 

Before:

 

 

After:

 

The multi-light shader does not do specular yet.

[lowenz]

Some performance (NO experimental features / No MSAA) results in WS4

 

i3 6300 + 1050 Ti

i3 8300 + 750 Ti

Edited September 27, 2018 by lowenz

[lowenz]

And WITH Soft Shadows + MSAA 4x

 

i3 6300 + 1050 Ti

 

i3 8300 + 750 Ti

[lowenz]

Last entry, Soft Shadows + FBOresolution=2 (->SSAA 4x - no MSAA)

 

i3 6300 + 1050 Ti

Edited September 27, 2018 by lowenz

[nbohr1more]

Thanks.

 

Now let's see what performance you get with Contact Hardening Soft Shadows (Shadow Maps):

 

r_testARBPrograms 1

r_shadows 2 (shadow mapping)

r_softShadowsQuality 24 or greater

r_softShadowsRadius 11

r_shadowMapSize 1024 or greater

 

[HMart]

Nice work guys but some things i saw on my first test.

on a AMD RX 570

Mission Volta and the stone 1

playing on a window not fullscreen.

The light gem seems to be always bright even when on total shadow!

Shadow maps work but they look very pixelated unless you use r_softShadowsRadius 10 but even so they still don't look the best they can be, right now TDM soft stencil shadows do look much better.

Shadows very near to the edge casting it shimmer like crazy, the efect is like a moving staircase going up and down, specially when using the player light.

This microsoft paper explain many of the things i saw https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/desktop/dxtecharts/common-techniques-to-improve-shadow-depth-maps

Some objects casting stencil shadows stop doing so when changing to shadow maps this doesn't seem right.

Performance seems to be high on shadow maps but perhaps it could be caused by the missing shadows above.

All Grass/plants, that i saw don't cast any shadow when using shadow maps, it must be the "noshadow" material keyword causing trouble.

This was mostly what caught my eye in this rapid test, will test better later.

But i'm happy with how this is going, is so good seeing you guys motivated to improve the engine and TDM further.

Thanks.

Now let's see what performance you get with Contact Hardening Soft Shadows (Shadow Maps):

r_testARBPrograms 1
r_shadows 2 (shadow mapping)
r_softShadowsQuality 24 or greater
r_softShadowsRadius 11
r_shadowMapSize 1024 or greater

Wait a minute will test that and i will update this...

 

update: playing at 1080p

 

r_testARBPrograms 1
r_shadows 2
r_softShadowsQuality 32
r_softShadowsRadius 11
r_shadowMapSize 2048

 

Shadow maps look AWESOME

 

performance low has 26 fps in some views

 

Returning to r_shadows 1

 

Missing shadows are still missing!?

 

performance always at 60 fps (frame rate locked), it seems that for shadow maps to perform has good has soft stencil shadows they need to look worse, .

Edited September 27, 2018 by HMart

[lowenz]

r_softShadowsRadius 11 ? Not 10?

[peter_spy]

One minor thing, r_showShadows is busted again.

[lowenz]

Last entry, Soft Shadows + FBOresolution=2 (->SSAA 4x - no MSAA)

 

i3 6300 + 1050 Ti

 

VS (same FBOresolution @2)

 

r_testARBPrograms 1

r_shadows 2

r_softShadowsQuality 24

r_softShadowsRadius 10

r_shadowMapSize 1024

 

Edited September 27, 2018 by lowenz

[lowenz]

And a FBOresolution-based comparison with all the rest cranked up:

 

FBOresolution 2

 

FBOresolution 1

[nbohr1more]

Thanks.

 

A few things you can experiment with regarding performance.

 

Try intermediate shadow map sized like 768, 1280, 1366, etc. (Ideally, power of two.)

 

There is a r_max... cvar that can define how large a shadow can be before it must toggle to Stencil Shadows.

You can try reducing that from 1000 to 500 or 250 (etc).

 

And, of course, try playing with the quality with non-standard r_softShadowsQuality values like 17, 26, etc. in the console.